The Butterfly Book: A Popular Guide to a Knowledge of the Butterflies of North AmericaHolland, W. J. (William Jacob)
Science
The Butterfly Book: A Popular Guide to a Knowledge of the Butterflies of North America
Holland, W. J. (William Jacob)
Butterflies -- North America
_Caterpillar._--The caterpillar is cylindrical, fleshy, transversely
wrinkled, and has on the second thoracic and eighth abdominal segment
pairs of very long and slender fleshy filaments; the body is ornamented
by dark bands upon a greenish-yellow ground-color; the filaments are
black.
_Chrysalis._--The chrysalis is stout, cylindrical, rapidly tapering on
the abdomen, and is suspended from a button of silk by a long cremaster.
The color of the chrysalis is pale green, ornamented with golden spots.
The larvæ of the genus _Anosia_ feed for the most part upon the
varieties of milkweed (_Asclepias_), and they are therefore called
"milkweed butterflies." There are two species of the genus found in our
fauna, one, _Anosia plexippus_, Linnæus, which is distributed over the
entire continent as far north as southern Canada, and the other, _Anosia
berenice_, Cramer, which is confined to the extreme southwestern
portions of the United States, being found in Texas and Arizona.
(1) =Anosia plexippus=, Linnæus, Plate VII, Fig. 1, ♂ (The Monarch).
_Butterfly._--The upper surface of the wings of this butterfly is bright
reddish, with the borders and veins broadly black, with two rows of
white spots on the outer borders and two rows of pale spots of
moderately large size across the apex of the fore wings. The males have
the wings less broadly bordered with black than the females, and on the
first median nervule of the hind wings there is a black scent-pouch.
_Egg._--The egg is ovate conical, and is well represented in Fig. 4 in
the introductory chapter of this book.
_Caterpillar._--The caterpillar is bright yellow or greenish-yellow,
banded with shining black, and furnished with black fleshy thread-like
appendages before and behind. It likewise is well delineated in Fig. 16,
as well as in Plate III, Fig. 5.
_Chrysalis._--The chrysalis is about an inch in length, pale green,
spotted with gold (see Fig. 24, and Plate IV, Figs. 1-3).
The butterfly is believed to be polygoneutic, that is to say, many
broods are produced annually; and it is believed by writers that with
the advent of cold weather these butterflies migrate to the South, the
chrysalids and caterpillars which may be undeveloped at the time of the
frosts are destroyed, and that when these insects reappear, as they do
every summer, they represent a wave of migration coming northward from
the warmer regions of the Gulf States. It is not believed that any of
them hibernate in any stage of their existence. This insect sometimes
appears in great swarms on the eastern and southern coasts of New Jersey
in late autumn. The swarms pressing southward are arrested by the
ocean. The writer has seen stunted trees on the New Jersey coast in the
middle of October, when the foliage has already fallen, so completely
covered with clinging masses of these butterflies as to present the
appearance of trees in full leaf (Fig. 79).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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